ROSEMARY SCOTT-FISHBURN

Mother Vision

June 1 - July 30, 2016

First Saturday Artist Openings ||| 4 June and 2 July, 6-9PM

PRESS RELEASE

JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY is proud to announce Mother Vision, the first solo-exhibition of photographer ROSEMARY SCOTT-FISHBURN featuring her newest series of dimensional photographs. Constructed of layers of images sublimated on acrylic, the artist extracts the background, middle and foreground and prints the photos to create shadowboxes which simulate the depth and space of these memories, rendered with dream-like colors and shadows. The exhibition will be on view in the aft gallery from 1 June to 30 July with First Saturday Gallery Openings on 4 June and 2 July from 6-9pm.

The artist says of this new series…

Several years ago, I printed a photograph of my son wearing an army jacket onto a transparency sheet for overhead projectors, and taped it to a wall in my home. Over the weeks, the image curled away from the wall, and the light shining through the transparency created a 3 dimensional shadow on the surface. Friends would walk past, stop, and walk back to stare at this simple optical illusion. That one image birthed for me an entirely new way of art-making in dimensional photography.

The boxes in this show are custom fabricated of acrylic, layered inside with polyester prints carefully manipulated to create a photograph that pops to life. When viewed in different alignments, the viewer is drawn in to a sort of ghost-world of snapshots.

In mothering and in art-making, I am constantly combing through memories, sifting through ashes in search of lost valuables. These are images of my own children, but they are also images of myself, of my projections and my inner life. My mother coined the term Mother Vision to mean her sort of “second sight” used to observe me when I didn’t think anyone was watching. In my work, I photograph my kids unobserved, the images informed by what childhood means to me now that I have the benefit of retrospect: innocence, euphoria, fear, exploration, loss, and unconsciousness. I can’t look at them without referencing myself as both child and mother.

I’m dedicating this work to my friend Elisa Lardani Marchi, who lost her life in childbirth last year, a week before I had my youngest daughter. Her loss, and the jolt it gave me in that week of waiting to have my own baby, cemented in me a desperation to imprint my children upon myself, imprint myself upon them, in ways I had never before experienced. This work comes out of a desire to imprint, the knowledge that memory is the afterlife of experience.

This is my mother vision.

Rosemary Scott-Fishburn is an artist working in digital and plastic media. A native of NH, she lives in Gloucester, MA with her husband and three children who are featured prominently in her current work exploring the uncertainties of childhood and their psychic, spiritual and aesthetic affects. Rosemary studied visual arts at Gordon College, has worked in the arts for the Gordon-in-Orvieto art program in Orvieto, Italy and has exhibited her photographs, paintings and large-scale copper relief drawings across the United States.

For further information, press or sales inquiries please contact the gallery director, Matthew Weldon Showman, at matthew@jonathanferraragallery.com or at the gallery +1.504.522.5471.